I discovered there is a lot of misleading information out there. We just replaced the timing belt on my brother's '97 Escort yesterday. The timing belt had lost about 6 or 7 teeth and the engine had jumped time significantly. He has the 2.0 Liter 4-Cyl. SOHC engine and thankfully that is a free-running engine. 2 hours and $30 bucks later and she was back up running again.
I'll share what I learned: I've always used the Gates website as reference to determine if an engine was interference or free-running. When he first called and told me his car wasn't running and that he checked the timing belt - and had found it had lost 6 or 7 teeth I went to the Gates website to see if it was an interference engine or not. I used the link to the PDF "Timing Belt Replacement Guide" on this page:
Gates Timing Belts
On the top of page 8 of the PDF, it lists Ford Escort 2.0 Liter 4-Cyl. SOHC '97-'00 and '01-'02 as non-interference (or free-running) type engines. (note the lack of an astrix symbol and see definition of astrix at bottom of page) further note that there is no recommended replacement interval it just says to inspect the belt at 120K and replace only if needed.
But when I went to the parts store to get a new belt it showed up as an interference engine on their computer, which made me a little nervous...
After I got to my brother's place and we were putting on the new belt I told him that the parts store computer said it was an interference engine even though the gates website said it wasn't. He said he also went to the gates website and it said it was an interference engine as well. I said no it wasn't I checked before i bought the new belt. After we finished up with the car and got cleaned up we went inside to the computer. He showed me that he had used a different link on that same page that read:
Got an Interference Engine? Find Out Now
When we looked it up together using that look-up tool (and I recognize Mark's chart) it said it was an interference engine but lists the same engine and belt part part numbers as the PDF.
Since the engine ran fine and the car drove well after re-aligning the timing and installing the new belt I tend to think the PDF on the gates website is correct and the both the look up tool on the gates website and the parts store computer were wrong.
Maybe someone else has some better info on why the two charts seem to contradict each other...?
-Saturday
